The generally held opinion on this is that that would never work, because Google has no reason to pay 5M a year to something that is available to anyone for fre

The generally held opinion on this is that that would never work, because Google has no reason to pay 5M a year to something that is available to anyone for free. The keyword is "slightly modified" here which implies that the modification is trivial. If the modifications are not trivial, then all bets are off of course.